Blockade Runner
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The Civil War Adventures of a Blockade Runner
Author: William Watson
language: en
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Release Date: 2001
William Watson published his account of the two years he spent evading Union gunboats and dealing with the "sharpers" who fed off the misfortune of war in 1892. Using log books, personal papers, and business memoranda, he sought to write a "plain, blunt" account of "events just as they happened." Instead, he wrote a classic adventure tale whose careful description of seafaring in the 1860s gives us a glimpse into a world now closed to us. Watson is the protagonist, but he shares his story with his ship, the Rob Roy, a center-board schooner whose shallow draft and wide beam made it the ideal vessel for slipping over shoals and dashing in and out of blockaded ports. He peoples his account with the good, the bad, and the unlucky, from the likeable and irrepressible Captain Dave McLusky to the loathsome and dishonest Mr. R. M. He takes his reader from Havana, where land sharks greeted incoming sailors, to Galveston, where sharp businessmen and corrupt officials connived to confiscate both profits and ships. He stops at Matamora, a dusty place on "a bare and barren coast," and he visits General Magruder in Houston. His crew brave gales and a hurricane that drives the Rob Roy back thirty miles; and he survives plots against his ship and his life. Through it all, Watson enjoys himself. Blockade running, he declares, was not "unlawful or dishonourable." Rather, it was "a bold and daring enterprise," an "exciting sport of the higher order," like racing yachts, and an almost obligatory act of defiance of a blockade "maintained by no other right than by the force of arms." The "commission merchants" did better than the blockade runners. But Watson recalled his years dodging federal gunboats and outwitting petty officials, treacherous crew, and dishonest businessmen as "much more congenial than the extortions and deceitful wheedling and trickeries of the legitimate trade." This is an adventure story held together by the nuts and bolts of sailing. Watson's discussion of why sail was superior to steam for running blockades is superb; his detailed accounts of surviving gales and outrunning Federal cruisers are fascinating. He takes yellow fever and high sea chases in stride. Through it all, he maintains his honor and guards his profits. For the reader who wants to ply the Gulf of Mexico under sail, play the lottery in Havana, and visit Texas when it was "a new country," Watson is the perfect guide to run the blockade that time imposes on posterity.
Blockade Runner
A rich Southern boy, an escaped Yankee prisoner, and jealous Jeff Majors are all vying for Leah Carter’s attention. A blockade-running sea captain, a beautiful rebel spy, a gunboat in hot pursuit, and the words of Scripture hitting like a hammer all add to the ongoing story of Jeff and Leah’s tumultuous world during the Civil War. Blockade Runner is the fifth of a ten book series, that tells the story of two close families find themselves on different sides of the Civil War after the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861. Thirteen year old Leah becomes a helper in the Union army with her father, who hopes to distribute Bibles to the troops. Fourteen year old Jeff becomes a drummer boy in the Confederate Army and struggles with faith while experiencing personal hardship and tragedy. The series follows Leah, Jeff, family, and friends, as they experience hope and God’s grace through four years of war.
Blockade Runner
Author: David Kent-Lemon
language: en
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Release Date: 2013-02-19
It is 1861. Tom Wells is in pursuit of a girl from North Carolina. He accepts an offer from his employer to leave the quiet obscurity of his job as an office boy in a London shipping firm to cross the Atlantic to Nassau in the Bahamas. Now he must face the hazards of the Union blockade of the Confederate ports in the American Civil War. Toms bravado may help him with the dangers of running the blockade, but how will he cope with the conflicting issues of love, loyalty and morality as he becomes entangled with a lady of easy virtue in Nassau?Toms adventures take him through the perilous triangle between Nassau, Charleston and Wilmington NC, where he must smuggle arms and munitions through a gauntlet of Union warships to the Southern ports, bringing cotton and tobacco back to Nassau. David Kent-Lemon presents us here with a fast paced and dynamic narrative, exploring a fascinating, dramatic and less well-known corner of that extraordinary conflict the American Civil War. The characters are finely drawn, with the balance between deceit and morality offset by courage and humor. The realism and historical accuracy of the background complete the picture.As the Civil War reaches its climax, so does the drama in Tom's life, heightened by the historical events within which he is embroiled.